Ya know, for some reason, when a strange old fucker tells me how much he likes tea-bagging, it always reminds me of similar conversations in The Castro...
I'd made the mistake of opening my mouth in an airport bar. I am, at times, a dumbass.
But, well, in all fairness, it's not often a "freedom-loving American businessman" gets a chance to discuss politics with a younger dude who thinks massive public debt designed to help select elite maintain a chokehold on a monstrously large government is a bad idea.
It was the piece I was reading at the time at the airport bar, a selection from Samuel (Dolgoff) Weiner's Ethics and American Unionism, that started it. Apparently lonely and looking for conversation, the guy'd asked me what I was reading. As soon as I said "...well, it's this essay written by this libertarian housepainter from New York...," the guy slithered up beside me, slurred a drink order to the server, a round on him.
For the record, there's no such thing as a free drink in this world...
He'd been at the so-called Tea Party protests in Chicago earlier in the year, a protest of what many on the Economic Far-Right associate with something akin to Socialism and financial nationalization...
... And yes, he even defined, for a young fella like myself, what he meant when he said libertarian: a libertarian, in this Age of Regression, refers to a fundamentalist born-again Christian, gay-hating, anti-reproductive-rights, flag-waving Patriot, the owner of a four-bedroom, three-bath home in the Columbus suburbs, owner of a chain of stores that sold Chinese-manufactured goods and provided minimal employee benefits, a downsizer of the Masses who was proud - PROUD - of the fact that he'd saved the economy (i.e. his own ass) by laying off about a dozen people...
Oh sure, buddy. And when the economy was lining your capitalist pockets, you jerked off to Reaganomics and Ayn Rand novels...
And, lord, the guy just wouldn't shut up about how much he loved tea-bagging, being a tea-bagger.
I didn't have the heart to explain that Samuel Dolgoff was actually a proud member of the Industrial Workers of the World, the man who coined one of my favorite phrases to describe the Bush/Obama bailouts (i.e. "State Corporate Welfarism"), a bona fide Wobbly revolutionary who loved freedom and his fellow workingman, an anarcho-syndicalist Jew from the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
And that guy, trust me, wouldn't have taken a free drink from a such a libertarian without an argument about how how Rush Limbaugh is supposedly right.
Motherfucker, please.
- MORE -
CINCINNATI (ZP) -- It was a clear case of mistaken identity. The woman thought I was someone else.
But, well, it's not often a middle-aged woman walks up behind me just outside of Paul Brown Stadium, grabs my ass, and bites my neck.
Well, not while sober, with nary a bar in sight, in the middle of a beautiful sunny day. I couldn't smell any booze on her breath but, well, hot chick in a low-cut blouse and whole lack-of-a-bra/ tid bit nipply there thing was sorta interfering with my perception.
"Oh, you're not Tommy's son, are you?"
"Um... no."
"You're sure? You're not _______?"
"No ma'am."
"Do you play football at [a smaller Ohio university]? I'll bet you play football...?"
I guess the question-and-answer session was her way of coping with embarrassment. Went on for about five minutes before I rather awkwardly excused myself from the discussion.
Okay, so maybe the woman was on something other than booze. But, well, from the looks of her, and given her rather obvious fondness for small college football players, well...
Whoever Tommy's son is, he's one lucky bastard if that Desperate Housewife has her way.
- MORE -
RANDOM COLLEGE TOWN, Ind. (ZP) -- I'm a lousy educator. I'm usually the first to admit it.
But I guess I'm fairly decent at bluffing my way through situations where a real presenter or lecturer would feel more at ease.
It's a gift. Or a curse. Not sure which.
The free wine and pizza helped.
The gathering's hostwwwess stood up in front of her coffee table, tapped her glass, and introduced me as "one of Ohio's most controversial bloggers, a librarian and cultural critic..."
Jesus, everybody hates a critic, I thought, trying not to smirk.
I was invited, this time, not to talk about librarianship, or blogging, or, well, being critical.
Nope, I was here to talk about life, about social networking and privacy, about how nobody, in the 21st Century, really buys that ...And the Meek shall inherit the Earth shit of sermons and puritanical patriotism.
But yep, sometimes that all overlaps with the information sciences, blogging, and critical examination of the world's systems of power.
C'est la motherfucking vie.
"Well, thanks...um...that was a wonderful introduction. Let me start by thanking _____ for hosting this great party...
"...And I'll try not to bore you with, heh, batshit and rambling stories...
"...And who owns the content of our World Wide Web? This fucking company owns that site, owns that server... but who owns the Internet? The answer is simple - humanity... The Web is bigger than any company, andy government, any one group..."
I tried my damnedest not to ramble. Honest-to-God. But, well, wine... room full of college kids...
And yes, for some reason, there's a bunch of undergrads (mostly female) in the U.S. and Canada who think I'm some younger version of Noam Chomsky because of my political rantings as of late...
Though having the chance to say I'd rather not be compared to anybody but myself, in person during casual conversation over glasses of box wine, does wonders for the ol' ego...
The Literate, the Life Scholar, and the Free of Thought have no patience for inheritance, a relic of an increasingly transparent capitalistic world filled with product-driven media, church dogma, greed, systems of oppression and coercion, and political partisanship...
That was, well, the point I hope I conveyed in what ended up being a somewhat batshit, rambling discussion, full of questions and comments, head nods and darting eyes.
Lecturing's a lot tougher than blogging.
Especially when there's box wine involved.
- MORE -
OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- The Whammo Kid had me backed into a corner, two six-shooters aimed squarely at my chest.
I was a goner. I didn't even know my offense or crime. He made no demands whatsoever. His guns glistened in the sunlight.
And no one in Martin Luther King, Jr., Park offered any help. Nobody even gave my assault a second glance, in fact.
What a way to go...
The Kid's cowboy hat sat cocked to one side, his jeans dirty and shirt stained. A wicked grin cut a tight-lipped canyon in his otherwise smooth face.
"Gimme your money!" The Whammo Kid finally demanded.
"But... Kid... I don't have any money...that's why I'm going to the bank..."
Sweat was beginning to fill my own Stetson, the moisture soaking down into the brim beneath the summer sun.
"Why?" The gunslinger asked. "Gimme FIVE DOLLARS FOR ICE CREAM!"
I felt my assailant's eyes cutting through me like a thousand daggers.
"Kid, I don't have any," I said. "Is...is...eh...your mom or dad... somewhere?"
"NO! I AM A ROBBER!"
I was ready for the end. Having no money to give my preteen thief, nothing of value, I watched in horror as The Kid aimed his plastic water pistols, fired.
Squirt. Squirt Squirt.
Squirtsquirtsquirt.
It was all over in less than a second. Being nowhere near tall enough to get off a body shot, his two-foot frame had to settle for a crotch shot.
My pants were soaked.
And with his first victim a mere notch on his summertime belt, the Whammo Kid took off running, ran all the way to a blanket in the park. A young woman looked up from her book as the kid pointed my way, blushed, and mouthed a silent apology.
I laughed, waved as if it didn't matter, and kept walking towards the ATM.
Kid, be glad I don't have a Supersoaker handy.
Where I come from, we don't bushwhack another cowboy in front of the bank...
- # # # -
5 comments:
Dude! I was just down South with the wife and the ol' father-in-law. He's a good guy at heart but when he first moved down South he founded a conservative Christian church while he expanded the family business (from Ohio). He is both morally conservative as well as a fiscal conservative.
During his birthday breakfast at the Cracker Barrel (my first time at a Cracker Barrel, tasty but I had cholesterol seeping out my pores afterward) he began, "I was watching Fox News..."
I immediately thought to myself, "Oy!" and I'm not even Jewish.
Thus began his rant about how the Government's bailout of GM amounts to totalitarianism because GM's best selling vehicles were the SUVs and the Government is going to limit our choices to three or four vehicles that are hybrids or something similarly heinous and outlaw SUVs entirely.
My Yale educated wife sat silent through this "discussion." After all, she's been through it time and again with him to no avail. Anyway, as soon as he began I immediately thought, "the Government isn't taking over ALL the car companies so this is totally asinine." He was talking in ridiculous absolutes, and he should know better because he is a very smart man (he's a venture capitalist now)... I held my tongue.
The next thought I had was that as I understand it, the sale of SUVs totally tanked in the last two years and that's exactly why GM is being fucked up the ass w/o any lube now. Alas, being the subtle gent that I am I told him that I recently saw a program on TV (sorry don't know where) that profiled the CEO of Ford, and how he saved Ford when he took the helm like a decade ago by securing loans (even though Ford had a solid balance sheet) in order to explore more fuel-efficient options. Everybody thought the guy was a lunatic at the time, now he's one of the best business men in the World for his foresight.
Anyway, to make what is already a long story short, the old man went on and on and I finally cut him off by dropping another absolute, I said, "Well, it's a good thing that the Government bailed GM out then because a few choices in cars is better than none!"
[crickets...
followed by my wife laughing]
He never responded to that remark and the subject was changed. My wife and I didn't say a word about it until later that evening when we were in a hotel halfway back to the Northeast.
She broke the silence by saying, "Just because the Government is limiting the choices at GM, it doesn't mean that you can't buy a car from Ford, or any other company." To which I replied, "I knew we were thinking the exact same thing!"
As I thought more about it the next day (precipitated by this story)I thought about all the ways his argument didn't even make nonsense. I mentioned this to my wife and she said, "I know, well, you have to take into account where he gets his news."
I'm glad I didn't say it, but it would have been great to point out that, over time, the Government has limited our choices regarding a lot of things, like lead in both gasoline and paint, and asbestos in insulation. And that these limits were good for everyone as despite the fact that led paint, and asbestos were awesome at what they did, they would kill you while they were doing it. Furthermore, the Government isn't banning SUVs. If GM or anyone else can build a SUV that pollutes less than X then they can have at it!
Did I say, "Oy?"
Oh, the tea-baggers. Firmly entrenched in the "make up history as we go along" mentality. And we've got round 2 coming up sometime soon. Whatever day that is, I think I'll pack a lunch and find a quiet spot in a park where I can't even hear the radios of cars passing by.
Now I have the urge to buy cowboy outfits for my nephews.
Oh my goodness librarianwoes, here where I live every other conversation often starts with "I saw this on Fox News. . ." or "Rush said. . ." You get the idea. It is something that, as an Information Literacy Librarian, and just somewhat educated person, I wonder how people who should know better say the dumb things they say. My condolences on your in-law.
As for the "teabaggers," I say we go around with some pictures and really show them what teabagging is all about.
Ay caramba.
Best, and keep on blogging.
You should sick the Whammo Kid onto Teabag guy.
Hehe finally getting caught up on blog stuff huh? wow when were you out here in muncie? that was like April...
cool post. and you did awesome.
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